Easton Sewer Board Surrenders Legal Bills To Judge

January 18, 1993|by MATT ASSAD, The Morning Call

The Easton Area Joint Sewer Authority on Friday surrendered an itemized list of its legal bills to President Judge Robert A. Freedberg, but labeled most of them privileged and urged the judge that they continue to be concealed from The Morning Call.

Freedberg had ordered the authority to turn the bills over with specific notations explaining which areas were concealed from The Morning Call and which the authority still considers confidential, said The Morning Call's attorney, Malcolm J. Gross.

"They turned the bills over, but from what I could see the bulk of them were still marked privileged or confidential," said Gross. "We argue there's no longer any reason to continue to conceal them."

Freedberg now has to decide which, if any, of the bills should continue to be concealed from the newspaper, Gross said.

Gross has until Friday to file the newspaper's counter argument on why all of the bills should be released. He said he'll fill the memorandum today or tomorrow.

The Morning Call sued the authority in 1991 for release of more than $1 million of unedited legal bills from several authority suits, including one seeking damages for a 1984 plant failure that dumped pollutants into the Delaware River.

When the authority first turned over legal bills to the newspaper, the total cost was revealed, but most of the itemized line items describing how the money was spent were censored because Haber argued disclosure of them may compromise the authority's position in the river pollution suit with the Coalition of Religious and Civic Organization (CORCO).

Early in the suit, Freedberg fashioned an agreement in which the authority would turn over the bills after the suit was settled, because Haber assured the CORCO suit was close to settlement, Gross said.

"That was more than a year ago," Gross said. "We only agreed to that because he said it would be over soon."

Gross further argues the CORCO suit is virtually complete. The authority has signed an agreement to settle the suit for $509,000 in fines and legal costs for CORCO, but the U.S. Department of Justice has yet to approve the deal, although it drew up the agreement. Final approval by the government is expected soon.

In November, Freedberg ordered the unedited bills turned over to the court and the authority complied in December.

However, when Freedberg received them he was unclear which line items were at dispute, so he ordered that Haber resubmit the bills with specific explanations of which items were concealed from the Morning Call and which the authority still considers privileged.